Vast underground water system helps drive Antarctica’s glaciers

Lake Whillans is a strange body of water because there is no liquid to fill it. It is buried under more than 2,000 feet of ice in the southern part of the world, but it still has a temperature of just shy of zero. It's warm enough to keep the lake's watery water. Lake Whillans is filled with life. A decade ago, a survey found thousands of different types of organisms that were 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609-

The remote stretch of ice above Lake Whillans has a different mystery in mind, as evidenced by the recent arrival of a seismologist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The plumbing below the glacier was thought to be much deeper than they could see. If the water beneath the lake was to be found, it would have implications for how the ice up above moves and how quickly it might contribute to rising seas. They couldn't prove what was there. It was too deep and covered in ice to use the traditional tools of glaciology, like bouncing radar signals off the ice or setting off explosives.

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In a study published in the journal Science, Gustafson’s team offers a long-awaited schematic of the watery world underneath the ice. A vast reservoir of groundwater reaches more than a kilometer below subglacial water features like Lake Whillans, containing 10 times as much water. To see it, the researchers turned to a technique called magnetotellurics, or MT, which harnesses natural variations in Earth’s electromagnetic field to sketch out a broad picture of the sediment below. They expect that similar groundwater systems underpin other areas where the ice is flowing fast—so-called ice streams that account for about 90 percent of the ice making its way from the continent’s interior to the ocean. “This is one piece of the puzzle asking why this ice flows the way it does,” says Gustafson. “So it’s really important for understanding what’s going to happen to Antarctica.”

Subglacial water plays a role in the movement of ice above it. ruts and planes on the terrain are created by how it alters the sediment below. lubricating the ground allows the ice to slide more quickly. A group of researchers reported in January that the so-called Doomsday Glacier, which holds back enough ice to raise global sea levels by two feet, could collapse within five years.